


Hold The Insomniac All Night

by Hairofgoldeyesofblue



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e07 Red Team III, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Operation Genoa, Season/Series 02, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 20:59:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2039961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hairofgoldeyesofblue/pseuds/Hairofgoldeyesofblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A couple days after the Genoa fallout, Mackenzie finds herself unable to sleep, so she calls Will.</p><p>Response to a prompt on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold The Insomniac All Night

**Author's Note:**

> So, this fic is based on the prompt: "It's the middle of the night and Mac can't sleep, so she wakes Will up to talk. He gets a little annoyed, but loves it in the end." I originally meant it to be fluffier, but it turned out with a bit more angst than I intended. Oh well...
> 
> Title comes from the song, "Insomniac" by Billy Pilgrim.

Mackenzie glanced at the clock for the umpteenth time. The glowing red numbers told her it was 2:32 AM, and she groaned. She’d been up for approximately twenty-one hours now, and after the last few days they’d had, she should’ve been asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. It wasn’t even that she was particularly wide awake; her brain just wouldn’t slow down long enough for the insomnia to stop.

She wondered if Will was awake too. He’d been known to not go to bed until the early hours of the morning, and they’d been getting along well enough lately that he probably wouldn’t mind if she called. Maybe just talking to him would help calm her down. (She was running low on ideas at this point, and it had worked in the past.)

Not giving herself further room for debate, she reached over to the nightstand for her phone. He didn’t answer right away, and Mackenzie was starting to think this was a bad idea until Will finally picked up halfway through the fourth ring.

“Hello?” his raspy, half-asleep voice greeted her. He probably hadn’t even looked at the caller ID before answering; probably hadn’t even fully opened his eyes. Mackenzie suddenly felt guilty.

“Will, uh, hi. You were asleep?”

“It’s the middle of the night, of course I was asleep.” – She could picture him rubbing his eyes, with his hair rumpled in a slightly boyish way – “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, um, I just couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d – I thought you’d still be awake,” she said apologetically.

“Insomnia? Did you try some tea? That always used to help.” He was sounding more awake with each reply.

“Yeah… I think I’m just at the point where I’m so tired and so stressed out that my body won’t let me relax. I guess I just figured listening to your voice always calms me down.” – she gave a little self-deprecating laugh – “Well, most of the time, anyway.”

He was quiet for a minute, and she thought he might’ve fallen back to sleep until he finally said, “Do you want me to come over?”

It was a daring question. While she’d been to his apartment several times in the past two years, he’d never been to hers. It wasn’t as if she lived in the same building she’d been in when they were together, so there weren’t memories attached to this apartment, but taking that kind of step in the middle of the night didn’t seem like a good idea, even if they were on firmer ground now. She shook her head, forgetting for a minute that he couldn’t see her. “No, it’s okay; you don’t have to.”

“I’d invite you over here, but I don’t want you out by yourself in the middle of the night.”

“I can take care of myself, Will. I’ve been in far more dangerous situations than Manhattan on a Thursday night.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “Just… humor me, please.”

“Okay.”

“You need to get some sleep, Mackenzie. It’s going to be a long few months.”

She sighed. “I know. I just…can’t. I can’t stop thinking about it. I thought maybe if I had someone to distract me that it might help.”

“You’re _sure_ you don’t want me to come over?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you want?”

It was a loaded question, even if he hadn’t meant it that way. She wanted to have never heard the word ‘Genoa.’ She wanted to Jim to have worked everything out with Maggie a year and a half ago. She wanted Jerry Dantana to have stayed in DC with Jane Barrow. She wanted to Brian’s stupid article to not have ruined the summer of 2011. She wanted to have heard whatever Will really said on the voicemail (because she had a feeling by now that Nina may not have been telling the whole truth). She wanted erase Wade from her relationship history, and Nina from Will’s. Most of all, she wanted to go back in time so that she never answered the phone that first time that Brian had called her after she had started dating Will. Mackenzie had a feeling that wasn’t what Will meant though, so she gave him the simplest answer she could think of. “Can you just talk to me for a little while?”

“Sure.” He was silent for a moment while he thought of something else to say. “Do you remember the time Charlie made us go to Torino to cover the Olympics?”

“I remember begging him to let us cover some real news and you siding with him,” she retorted.

“Well, _I_ remember you getting sick on the plane and throwing up on me.”

Mackenzie cringed. Not one of her finer moments. “Well, I also remember you cleaning me up and getting me straight to the hotel afterwards. You snuck me into your room, since they gave you a room alone and I was supposed to be sharing with Rachel, and we spent the whole night in bed, watching movies on pay-per-view, even though they were all in Italian.” Her voice had softened. “You always knew how to take care of me.”

“I used to know how to help you sleep too.”

“Mmhmm,” Mackenzie mumbled in agreement, not bothering to resist the yawn that crept up on her. Calling Will had been a good idea. She remembered the way he’d hypnotically run his fingers through her hair or rub her back to soothe her into sleep. (Or, there was always the foolproof method of using sex to tire her out, of course.) Wrapped up in Will’s arms and enveloped by his scent was the most wonderful haven she’d ever known.

“Close your eyes, Mackenzie. I’ll keep talking, okay?”

She willingly obliged. _This_ was what she really wanted; Will in her ear. Even after they’d broken up, when Mackenzie was heartbroken and desperate and facing possible death on a daily basis, she’d burrow under the scratchy blankets on her military-grade cot and attempt to drown out the sounds of nearby gunfire, listening to old broadcasts of _News Night_ so she could hear Will’s voice again. Now, with the Genoa fallout and the prospect of losing her career ahead of her, she needed that particular method of comfort again (especially since she couldn’t have him in person). So, she put the phone on speaker and set it on the pillow next to her, listening to Will’s soft drawl talk about everything from the gorgeous dress she wore to the 2007 Correspondents Dinner, to how the New York Jets had crushed the Buffalo Bills that week, to the upcoming election, until her breathing evened out and she finally drifted off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
